World War One changed and had many affects on the world during its time and is still remembered today many years after it took place. But what is mainly remembered from the war is how the world’s countries and borders were changing at a rapid speed during the Paris Peace conferences. The Paris Peace conferences were made up of the 29 countries including the allied countries that were fighting during the war. The major aims of the Paris Peace conferences were to discus and create peace terms for the defeated German empire, and other fallen empires or countries that lost during World War One. The conferences were held in the city Paris, France and took place 1919-1920. Those years Paris could have been considered the centre of the world, for what was to happen would change Europe that they knew it, and make it the one we know today. But of course with everything in history there were the success and failures that occur.
The success of the peace conferences did impact Europe in a dramatic way. Not only politically but physically at the same time. During the war one of the main problem that occurred was that genocide had happened to different groups who were living all around Europe. The Armenian genocide was the biggest one that took place during that time. Because of what the Ottoman Empire had done to the Armenians it was decided at the Treaty of Sevres that a country would be formed for the Armenians to live on. Many more countries were formed by the Paris Peace conferences from the lands of the fallen empires that had lost. Not only the new countries had benefited from the conferences, but countries that had existed prior to the war had received their lands back for example Greece was given the land that was taken from the Ottoman Empire.
It was one thing to cut up the central powers and create these lands into new independent countries, but the setback from this was what would happen to the people who were already on the lands. This was a failure from the conferences not to think ahead before the problems took effect. There were fights between the people who had lived there and the ones who had gotten the lands from the agreements at the conferences. Thousands of people were displaced from their homes, and even did not have nationality because the borders had changed. Certain areas did not want to change their ways and kept on speaking their mother tongue. An example of this is South Tyrol was given Austrian land but was given to Italy till today they mostly speak German.
When the war had finished the allied powers did not want to risk the chance of another world war taking place. To do so the allied countries had made the central powers and their ally’s militaries limited so the chance of uprising for another war would be less of a chance. Nearly all of the treaties had written that the central powers and their allies (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Ottomans, and Bulgaria) had to cut down on their soldiers, canoed ships, air force. Some countries did not have more then 20,000 solider in their armies. Whilst other countries were not allowed to have a air force unit. By cutting off the military in a country you are at the same time affecting their economy.
These drastic changes which were taking place throughout Europe were making some countries rise and others fall and collapse. Germany was one of the countries which were falling. As a punishment to Germany the Allied powers did not let other countries to unite or reunite with the fallen empire. At the same The Central powers and their allies were forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to the Allies as compensation because of the war. This made Germany and other countries economy fall because they had been not making a lot of money, and had to pay off this huge debt to the central powers.
The conferences were to bring stability into Europe after the war. But in reality the countries who had won wanted to become stronger in all ways. Certain countries did not get their independence. The only change was from being the colony of one country to another. An example of this was Syria and Iraq became mandates of Great Britain and France. As well in the far East China went to the conferences to get back the land that Germany had taken from them, but went home empty handed. The conferences were mainly benefitting the power hungry countries, not all the Allied countries benefited from the conferences such as Italy hardly got anything at all compared to what France and Great Britain.
From the Paris Peace conferences we saw what the emotion of people can to the world. Both good and bad things were seen from these conferences. But I would say that the overall outcome by the conferences was revenge. Of course there were good achievements which were made in the conferences, giving groups their own countries. But the allies wanted to make sure that a world war could not happen again, because they knew if the central powers had another chance to take against the allies they would, and maybe at that time they would succeed. It was not a secret that the allies wanted to crush the central powers both France and Britain always said that they were to easy on Germany when it came to the treaties.
